christian living on Cheap Grace

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace ...

One afternoon I was at a local basketball court and started a pickup game with a guy I’d seen there a few times. He was quite a character—he cursed like a sailor and had so many tattoos on his body I ...

Leader: Through the grace of Christ Jesus who gave His body and shed His blood for our forgiveness, hear and believe that “he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He h...

Gracious God, you have given us great mercy through Jesus, yet we have withheld mercy from others. Our hearts have been hardened by the world and our sin. Would you soften our hearts? And give us a de...

Evangelicals believe they are saved by grace through faith but then add a man-made waiver that you have to work as hard as you can meet middle-class behavioral patterns to hang onto it.

All: Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment. We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

In the Second World War, a group of soldiers were fighting in the rural countryside of France. During an intense battle, one of the American soldiers was killed. His comrades did not want to leave his...

Almighty God, too often we settle for brokenness in our lives. Rather than offering forgiveness, we hold onto offense. Rather than pursuing justice, we turn away . Rather than offering mercy, we c...

Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than receive.” “Well,” you say “that is a nice theory—but is it really true?” There is really only one way to find out: Give! Give generously and consistently, ...

Angela’s Ashes took the publishing world by storm when it was released in September 1996. It won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in the category of Biography/Autobiography. It was also a...

It takes a profound conversion to accept that God is relentlessly tender and compassionate toward us just as we are—not in spite of our sins and faults (that would not be total acceptance), but with t...

Lord, help us to be a people known for the ways in which we live out our faith by loving and serving all people, even those who, in the world’s eyes, have little to offer us. By treating them with dig...

We fixate on sins of commission far too much. We practice holiness by subtraction-don't do this, don't do that, and you're okay. The problem with that is this: you can do nothing wrong and...

Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn’t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us.  …Civility is a different matter, though. I can treat ...

If I withhold mercy, I have lost touch with the gospel. I have lost touch with God’s undeserved kindness and pardon.

Father God, too often we show preference to those who appear to have it all together, to those whom we consider complete: the self-motivated, self-made, and self-sufficient. We honor the rich and look...

Just the other day, I was out on a bike ride for some exercise. Because I work for a high-end cycling company, I had the opportunity to test ride one the bikes we make – a bike that comes with a price...

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

For the times we neglect to care for our brothers and sisters in Christ, please forgive us, Lord. For the times we fail to welcome new people who look or act different from ourselves, please forgiv...

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , written almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Kelly describes the tension that all ministries must live in; the focus on this world or the wor...

In their thoughtful book on reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice share how Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement showed up in the lives of the working poor, which ultimately enable...

Holy God, we confess that we have been lukewarm about living our faith in Jesus each day. We put off to tomorrow what we know in our hearts you want to happen today. We go through the motions of relig...

We readily confess our little faults in order to suggest that we have no big ones.

In Silence, Shusaku Endo writes of the journey of Portuguese Jesuits journeying to Japan. It is a conversation about those who intend to take the path of Jesus, only to find they are on the path of Ju...

The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a far larger, homelier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sin...

O God, Father of us all, we praise you for so binding humanity together that we must each lean upon the strength and labor of others. We ask your blessing on all men and women who have worked to build...

Live out your faith this week by doing good deeds, God is with you.

Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful.

Free us, Lord, from our obsession with ourselves long enough to care for others; to be so concerned about the well-being of the human community that me don’t have to worry about our place, our church,...

Henri Nouwen is a well-loved writer and theologian who taught for decades at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, but he left behind the academy to serve among the disabled popula...